What if I told you the majority of “audiophiles” have no idea what SINAD or most objective terminology we discuss on this forum are and only care about subjective sound (from a established reviewer, or themselves), watts, low frequency extension of their system, and arbitrary metrics like imaging, soundstage and impact.
In the same way I (engineer) would struggle to read a paper on classical philosophy, most consumers of audiophile publications would struggle to read a review which is based solely/mostly around objective analysis.
Stereophile does it right. Subjective report followed by relatively well implemented objective analysis at the end. Classical audiophiles will likely skip the measurement section, and those like us will likely skip the subjective section straight to the the measurements. Nevertheless, checks all boxes.
I have been lurking on this forum since 2018 or so, and even I have realized that exposure and understanding of such scientific and objective analyses has clouded my vision of real world perspectives and motives in other/general audiophiles. We (our perspectives and motives) are in the minority and it’s important to realize that before critiquing publications, they are simply trying to cater to ideal audience groups (even if the individuals in said groups happen to be misguided in their approach towards reading about audio and gear, in our eyes.)
ASR is unique in that there is a donation aspect for funding, but that is not the case for many publications. Strategic marketing and direction (esp. with regard to creating a desirable advertising outlet ) is the way they stay afloat. Most brands willing to spend $$$$ on running ads on review sites, likely do not want the upmost scrutiny on objective analysis, thus the cycle continues and the publication format is established.
You're right. Most consumers should not need to know a lot though.
We tend to blame the consumers here more than we should.
The motives of your general audiophiles today
did not appear from thin air. A generation of industry professionals, in the widest sense of the word, have - intentionally or otherwise -
moulded the situation where now people pay for hundred thousand dollar cables and twelve thousand dollar fuses (those are US dollar figures), and where a product like the one under discussion here, which has real engineering faults, is praised to the hilt by people who may or may not have "golden ears" but don't bother to see if you can fry eggs on the lid after twenty minutes' use.
They aren't just "catering" to a broken market, they are
sustaining it. Never mind a "rigorous objective approach" or such, just letting a little more honesty into the industry would go a long way. This product is badly engineered and it should be called out for it, for one. Maybe the Attessa 2 would still have iffy measurements, but at least they might pay attention to the layout and deal with the heat issue and the interface issues detailed in this and other reviews.
EDIT - as an aside, I should point out that some products are going to run hot regardless because of their technology, be it hot tubes or class A operation. Regardless of what I think about those, they are a different matter to this one.
As for Stereophile, the measurement section notes the heat issue, but if it's not in the main text, your general reader is most likely to miss it. The subjective report has to go beyond the flowery text about different types of sound and pick up on setup and app issues, on how hot the device runs, how good the instructions are, whether it has sharp edges or inadequate connectors, I'm sure we can think of a few more things that should be in a use based subjective review that rarely make it. Stereophile is better than some in this regard, this review points out some use problems. It's just a shame that "it runs hot!" never made it into the main part of the review.